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The Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has continued its series of articles called “90 days,” presumably based on Michael Watkins’ bestseller, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.  Each WSJ column addresses the most critical things to remember in the first days following a major career transition.

There’s lots of terrific cross-pollination here, so if you’re in transition, go ahead and read them all!

• 90 Days: Working Productively As a Telecommuter
• 90 Days: Relocating Overseas? Do Your Homework And Ease Your Way
• 90 Days: Acing Your First Post-College Job
• 90 Days: Working for Yourself Can Have Its Challenges
• 90 Days: Easing Back From Maternity Leave
• 90 Days: Dealing With a PR Crisis Takes Planning and Truth
• 90 Days: Joining a Nonprofit Board Is More Than a Labor of Love

~ For more WSJ “90 Days” articles ~

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Related Post:

The First 90 Days: Strategic Career Transitions

I received an email today from an AmeriCorps VISTA leader in Oregon, asking if I was available to work in Portland’s Native American Youth and Family Center. Unfortunately, that’s several thousand miles away! 

AmeriCorps  is not just for 17-24 year olds. Members of AmeriCorps VISTA program are expected to have a college degree or some working experience, and commit to serving full-time for a year. In exchange, VISTA workers receive training, moving assistance, health care, and a $4725 education award. Members also receive a modest living allowance.

VISTA members commit to a nonprofit organization or local government agency, working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, strengthen community groups, and much more.   Just think:  You could work in Portland, too.

One of my dear friends directs an organization that works with inner city youth. 

These young people are often battered with repeated failures, but Chris believes in them, even when no one else does.  He encourages them to believe in themselves, too.

“Always Begin Again,” he tells them. Over and over.
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I’m helping a woman finish her latest book.  She’s old enough to be my grandmother, but whizzes around the internet like a pro and still hikes in the Andes.  She sent me an email yesterday, along with the latest installment of her manuscript. 

“This is so HARD,” she wrote.

‘But I have a sign up,” she continued, “that says ‘Failure can not tolerate persistence.”  Got it from a wonderful book called The War of Art.’

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Andy is home.  He called me today, and he sounded much better.  People have taken good care of him, so he was calling around to check in,  thank everyone.  His client had paid his hotel bill last night, even though he hadn’t managed to finish their show.  He added that Phillip has had some good days while he was gone, but that he himself hit another rough patch,  coming home this afternoon to the empty house.  

But he already has lots of things set up, lots of meetings with lots of people, for his business and to go over the estate, legal and financial things.   A  lot of mail had piled up while he was gone, too.  I could hear him shuffling through it.  He listed some of it for me:  Paperwork about benefits.  Insurance information for COBRA. 

And the death certificate finally came.  

“And, maybe,” he paused, “a grief counselor or something.  That might be good.”
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There’s a quote on scrap of paper on my desk that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. It keeps getting shuffled to the top of my piles. I heard it last fall from an arborist who was speaking to our group about how badly our area’s trees had suffered from a year of severe drought, last spring’s late freeze, and a summer of record-setting heat.

Then he smiled. “But,  enough gloom and bad news.  I recommend, as all of us do who have the perpetual gardener’s heart: replant next spring!”

A few years back, former Harvard Business School Professor Michael Watkins published an international best-seller entitled The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.

More recently, the Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has been running an excellent series of articles called “90 days.”

In each of these periodic columns, WSJ authors address the most critical things to remember, and steps to take, in the first days and months after making a major career transition.  While I assume WSJ is using Watkins’ book as a model,  “9o day” topics range from “Make the Most of a New Promotion” to “Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search.”

I’m intrigued, too, by the choice of a “ninety-day” interval.

Ninety days was, in fact, almost exactly the period it took me to establish definitively that my most recent employers were not prepared to make an executive transition.  It really did take about three months for me to run through all my own “critical success strategies” first, to see if there was any way at all to save the dying patient.  There wasn’t. 

Michael Watkins describes getting acquainted with a new organization as being similar to “drinking from a fire hose.”  Yes, that’s exactly what it was like, but I fully expected to move on to the point eventually where the torrent would slow a bit.  It’s very strange to have it come to a complete stop, instead.   

So according to the 90-day model, I’m currently in  a subsequent transitional period which happens to follow immediately upon the prior one, without the traditional break in between.  So what should I do?

‘The trick to a successful transition is not to panic,’ says Doug Matthews, President and CEO of Right Management.’ 

‘The biggest mistake is not a financial one, but a psychological mistake,’ says Andrew Tignanelli, president of Maryland-based financial advisory firm Financial Consualate. ‘People panic. They feel and act devastated.’

Before even thinking about boxing up plants and swiping staplers, find a way to get your personal files out of the office. Fire off a few emails to your personal email account with files attached and export all your contacts.’ (Yes, and thank goodness I learned that trick a couple of jobs ago!)

And maybe most importantly:

Meet your new boss. It’s you. You’re working for yourself for the time being, and the job is all about marketing a promising candidate. Just as you would with any other job, establish a home office space and regular hours of operation.

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Creative Commons Photos by AudreyJm529
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Here are the WSJ “90 day” articles to date:

• 90 Days: You’re the New Boss, Now What?
• 90 Days: Make the most of a new promotion
• 90 Days: Managing your former peers takes effort
• 90 Days: Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search
• 90 Days: Planning a Move to Your Second Job
• 90 Days: What to do after a Layoff.
• 90 Days: Finesse a Flexible Work Schedule